LABORERS AT JONES HIGH GO UNPAID

Paychecks bounced and new ones promised day after day never came for laborers putting up drywall and metal framing at Jones High School.

So more than 30 workers walked off the job Monday morning and picketed along Orange Blossom Trail near the construction site, creating another setback for the costly makeover of Orlando's oldest black high school. Other workers quit Friday to find work elsewhere and couldn't picket, co-workers said.

In all, as much as $50,000 is owed to about 40 workers, their union representatives estimate.

Workers such as Marcus Arroyo, 32, carried a sign in English and Spanish, and complained that he has a wife and two kids to feed, and his rent was due last week. There's no one left for him to borrow a few bucks from just to get by any longer.

"I haven't been paid -- I'm owed 22 days' work and overtime," he said. "What am I supposed to do?"'

Derrick Wallace, president of Construct Two Group of Orlando, vowed Monday to get to the bottom of what went wrong. And he promised that every worker would be paid what they're owed by today or Wednesday.

The money for Arroyo and his friend Ceasar Gallego, who says he's owed 101 hours, was already paid to the subcontractors, Wallace said. But it somehow didn't make it through the chain of contractors and subcontractors and ultimately to some of the workers, Wallace said.

Wallace laid the blame at the feet of subcontractor DC Drywall Inc. of Kissimmee, which was hired to provide labor by another subcontractor, Acoustical Ceiling Level Inc. of Winter Park.

But Bill Yarber, a manager at DC Drywall, told his workers and the Orlando Sentinel that he hadn't been paid yet and his company is already $15,000 "in the hole" and hasn't made any money yet on the project.

But Wallace said a check in the amount of $18,000 was paid by ACL and cleared the bank to DC Drywall on Friday, the same day workers complained that that subcontractor said he wasn't paid.

Yarber said the $18,000 was for different work, and he is owed as much as $80,000 by ACL. Neither ACL President Jeremy Jenkins or any other spokesman for the company could be reached Monday. A secretary told the Sentinel that no one would be available for comment.

Wallace's company is the general contractor in charge of rebuilding the school, already expected to cost $49 million, or $14 million more than originally planned.

"We have an obligation to see that everyone on this project gets paid, and it will happen," Wallace said.